Wav is a rush. Beats surfing: no pesky vhite shark attacks. You also don’t have to contend with applications that take 40MB of hard drive space with features that even an overzealous grad student wouldn’t use. The only danger you’ll have to face when using Wav is RAM usage, and to be fair, this isn’t so much Wav’s problem as it is the way OpenDoc works. Other than that, using Wav is like finding a deserted beach with big surf, and you with your short board.
About OpenDoc Aside from being a top-notch word processor, Wav is one of the first genuine commercial, full-version-release OpenDoc parts, and as such, it’s real cutting-edge stuff. (Wav has been certified by CI Labs as an official Live Object — this is like the “Good Housekeeping” seal for OpenDoc.) For those of you not familiar with OpenDoc, it’s a new component technology co-developed by Apple (and several other high-tech big kids) that concentrates on documents rather than on applications. Users open a document, drag on OpenDoc parts (or PICTs, or text, or the like) and these are automatically incorporated into the document. OpenDoc parts can be anything from a word processor such as Wav to a spreadsheet part to a movie viewer to a Web browser. The theory is that developers can concentrate on the things that they’re good at, users can include only the functions they want by dragging in parts, and the whole world breathes a sigh of relief as wasted space is replaced by small, cheap OpenDoc parts and documents.
It’s Wav’s connection to OpenDoc that makes it extra nifty. As an OpenDoc container. Wav can hold any other OpenDoc part. This means you can put all kinds of graphs, Web pages, and pictures in your document without having to load another application. Want a chart that illustrates how Dalmatian sales have increased since Disney released “101 Dalmatians”? Just drop Corda Technologies’ C-Graph (a demo part comes with Wav) and you get a chart. Drag a Cyberdog URL that points to tab-delimited Dalmatian data, and your graph is automatically updated via the Internet. Once a part is embedded, you can put a border around it — a nice touch. Wav can also be embedded in any other OpenDoc container, including itself.
Beyond components Wav is proof that the do-what-you’re-good-at philosophy behind component software works. As a word processor, Wav is intuitive. You can begin typing anywhere on a page merely by clicking where you want to type — no string of returns to get to the middle of a page. A “precursor” (which looks like a grayed-out text insertion cursor) follows your pointer to let you know where your cursor will appear when you click. To set up document headers and footers, just click in the header or footer box, and start typing. Wav also supports dr^-and-drop editing. Just select the text you want to move, and put it anywhere, including into other OpenDoc documents and drag-and-drop-aware applications. One limitation to Wav’s drag and drop seems to be that you can’t move text more than a full page away from where you picked it up. You can get around this with cut and paste, but wouldn’t it be nicer to drag all the way?
A testament to its elegant design. Wav implements dynamic text wrap. When you drag a part onto a text-filled page, Wav automatically wraps the existing text around the part as you move it — all in real time. This is great fun all by itself, and you get the added benefit of seeing how your text will look without having to reflow it or set up a bunch of flow options. Columns are also easy to use. From a pop-up menu in the folder bay, you can select the number of columns, and whether you want a line between them. Columns go across sections; to change the number of colunms that appear in the middle of a document, just start a new section.
Wav has most of the other features you would want in a word processor, including full tabs, colored text, search and replace, AppleGuide help, word count, justification control, and full control of line spacing. However, Wav is also missing a couple of more esoteric features, including non-contiguous text selection and kerning control. These will be missed. Some high-end bonuses often associated with word processors, such as indexing and mail merge, are also not included in Wav, but the nice thing about OpenDoc is that someone else can write an indexing or mail merge part, and anyone who needs those functions can buy and install those parts. Spell check for Wav is implemented by just such a part: Lexi, by SoftLink.
The final word: Wav is the spiffiest word processor to come along in several years. It’s elegant and intuitive (with easy keyboard navigation, bulleted lists, and painless right-delete), and its integrated Internet services are a godsend. A few clicks in Cyberdog brings up all the information available on the Internet. You can also make graphs, import data of all kinds just by dragging in files (including Word 5.1 files, QuickTime movies, PICTs, JPEGs, sounds, and Cyberbuttons), and drop in any other OpenDoc parts that you might need. Installation and operation were surprisingly smooth, with only one Type 11 error striking. All of this for only $59. I’m convinced. Wav is my word processor of choice.
Reynolds, David. (March 1997). Wav. MacAddict. (pgs. 66-67).
Digital Harbor
Applications
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6 / 
2020-09-14 / 
e654e62021846be4deee4acf640bde14b5a00b97 / 
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WAV_Install.img_.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
